Life Near the Bone

However mean your life is, meet it and live it. Love your life, poor as it is. Sell your clothes and keep your thoughts. Life nearest the bone is the sweetest. --Henry David Thoreau, Walden

When HD Throeau want to live beside Walden Pond, he pared his life down to what he considered its essentials. The physical possessions he took to his 10 x 15 cabin, the one he built largely from castoffs with his own hands, were a cane bed, his green writing desk, a small table, and three chairs. He didn't do this because he had to, but because he thought there was something he had to learn, something that could be learned no other way than to remove all the clutter and the noise it generated. 

We usually have no idea how much noise surrounds us. I went to Alaska once, in 1985, and experienced for the only time a life without noise. We drove out into the what seemed like the wilderness to us, though in Alaskan terms, it was just, well, just Alaska. But we pulled over in the middle of nowhere, literally more than a hundred miles from any man-built structure, shut off the car and listened. That day, for the first and only time, I could HEAR the wind. And on it, the whirr of insect wings. And nothing else. No engine. No human. No bird or rustling of any animal, although they surely were there. It was just the earth. The earth breathing.

I think Thoreau had a similar experience by his pond cabin. Completely alone in a place that declared the vitality of life all around him. And he chronicled it. The birds, the fish, the habits of plants, the beavers. He had visitors, to be sure, but left the distinct impression that they were far less interesting than the revelations nature provided. And the revelation that stuck was that the material things we hang on our lives are too easily mistaken for life itself. Life is best lived, he thought, without as many of them as we can manage. Even undisturbed cartons stored in a shed or a basement exert a silent claim on our lives, a claim of attention and awareness. They are just THERE. Thoreau wanted to evaluate their noise and, living in the woods, he did.

He eventually went back to what we call civilization, of course, but with a renewed attitude, one he wanted to share with us. Hence the book. I am in a place in life where I have a chance, another chance, to do something similar, to sell my clothes and other possessions, if you will, so that I can lay final claim to my thoughts. I am paring my life down to see whether I can find the bone of it and I'm encouraged by HD's happy ending.

I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.

Bravo, HD. I endeavor to similarly advance.

Image: The Reader's Thoreau

Recognizing the Call

Hearing and listening. They aren't the same thing. We can hear before we listen. Listening is intentional. And the difference is important because the whole idea of listening is inherent in developing a deep life of faith. 

The admonition to listen is everywhere in the Old Testament - The Israelites are told to listen to God over and over, to listen to their prophets, and to listen to their king. Samuel presents himself to God by telling Him, "Speak, Lord, your servant listens." Psalms and Proverbs, the pleas and the wisdom, all include God and His servants listening. And of course, Jesus ends many parables with the final thought, "He who has ears, let him hear."

And you know why?

Because God is always calling. 

And we are not always listening.

Instead, we're usually talking.

"God, I pray for this." 

"God, please do that."

"God, why did you do (or allow) this?"

We just need to shut up once in awhile. If there are answers to these questions, they are not in the noise of prayers or even of worship. They are in that still, small voice we keep talking about but rarely heed.  They are in the silence because in silence is communion and, in communion, few answers are required. 

Oswald Chambers said, "The call of God is like the call of the sea. No one hears it but the one who has the nature of the sea in him." 

He who has ears for God will hear Him. 

Image: dreamstime

The Price of Consolation - Living Like a Desert Father

 

Some words have more than one meaning. Take 'Consolation', for instance. In its most common use, it can mean the sweet ministrations of empathy given in a difficult moment. To a comtemplative, however, - that is, someone who works to develop their spiritual life through meditation and/or study - it means something quite different. It means achieving and maintaining life in the presence of God. Consolation = Connection and fellowship with God. 

The Desert Fathers, early Christian hermits, ascetics, and monks, lived in the deserts of Egypt, Palestine, and Syria starting around the 3rd century AD. They left the cities to seek a life of deep solitude, unceasing prayer, and spiritual combat. Sound like fun? Well, maybe not. But they discovered something many of us actively seek when we take Christ at His word that He wants to give us Peace. 

"My peace I give to you. My peace I leave with you." (John 14:27) We say it all the time, don't we? We wish it for one another. We pray for it. 

But Peace costs something.

I was reading an article in America magazine recently about a young woman who hung up a fulfilling career to have children and raise them at home and was trying to manage the transition, perform her daily tasks, and maintain a relationship to God. Not surprisingly, she found this difficult because her new life held none of the intellectual challenge of the old. Oh, it held challenges, all right, but rather than complex problem solving and quick, tangible results, it held day after day of repetitive tasks done mostly in isolation. 

It was tough for awhile until she understood that her life resembled that of the desert fathers, who did not seek worldly success but chose instead a life of solitude, of repetitive and mundane tasks, and those tasks became essential to their paths to God. 

Are they boring? Yes. Who likes changing diaper after diaper, or washing dishes meal after meal without visible end? But it's the daily tasks that offer the brainspace for prayer. It's in the mundane that stillness is available and peace can be found. 

Want peace? This is where it can be found: in regular, intentional separation from the world; in inner quiet; in repetitive manual labor. You already know it's not found in the busyness of packed schedules or in our retreat into entertainment and devices or in homes overloaded with stuff and the shopping that gets them that way. 

When folks recommend meditation and quiet times, this is the reason. They are looking for peace. And in this confusing and hectic world, even at the price, it is worth it. 

Image: Dreamstime

Being Abraham

 

Abraham had a tough life. Sure, God considered him a friend in a way many of us can barely imagine, but really, theirs wasn't the kind of friendship most of us would relish. 

He never really got to settle in. First, God told him to leave his home in Ur without giving him a destination. That's it. Just leave. Not go to the next town or to Jerusalem or to Detroit. Just go. And, remarkably, Abraham seemed content with that. He went. Just like that, one day at a time, and ended up in Haran, after 600 miles on foot with his whole household. 600 miles.

He stayed there for awhile, and then God told him to get up and leave again, this time to the promised land in Canaan. Another 400 miles. On foot. To a land already occupied with folks they had to evict by force. And Abe did it. 

When he got there, God told him he would have a son. His wife had a few chuckles over that because of their advanced age, but Abe believed it and waited. He waited 25 years and no son came. His wife got impatient and tried to make it happen, but that didn't work out the way she planned and finally, when Abe was 100, his wife had a baby. 

Later, God told Abraham to kill his son. Yup, the same one he waited 100 years for. And Abraham prepared to do it.

Well, I feel a lot like Abraham these days. I can see what God has done and what He is doing and think I can see what God wants me to do, but for the life of me can't see how to get from point A to point B. It's like God is saying, "Go to Los Angeles" and then He breaks my legs. It's like He's promising me an impossible son. Just like Abraham. It's like He's telling me something is going to happen, but there is no possible way it can. 

And I guess that's the point. Trusting God (or anyone, for that matter) really depends on not understanding how impossibilities can actually happen. It's doing as much as we can in obedience and love, then letting the person responsible for getting the rest done just do it. After all, our aim is to fulfil God's purpose, not our own, or is supposed to be. And if the purpose is not ours, then the method by which it is accomplished is not ours, either. 

The simple way is to say it's a matter of relinquishing control, and that's probably true, but it's more than that. It's believing God is God. It's understanding the nature and reality of love. It's acknowledging that our greatest strength doesn't lie in strength of character, natural virtue, knowledge, or experience. Our greatest strength lies in our connectedness to God. It's remembering that our first and best purpose is not to succeed in our plans. It's to follow, like Abraham, where we're pointed, content to not understand why. 

Maybe that's what will make me a friend of God, too. 

Image: Crosswalk.com

How to Lose your Faith

 

Did you ever notice that you have been made human?

Well, of course you have. But it's a problem, isn't it? I mean, you were made human, but it seems like every time we turn around, we're being told to be something else. More spiritual, more perfect, more like Jesus. And none of these things seem to fit in to the reality of humanity. Humanity is random, very flesh and blood, and full of error. It's a thing, for sure. What exactly, then, are we to do with these two things that seem so far apart, spirit and humanity?

Well, Simone Weil had something so say about that. 

"Whoever puts his life in his faith in God can lose his faith but he who puts his life in God Himself will never lose it."

We are often told that the bridge between the perfection of the spirit and the imperfection of humanity is faith, but Simone doesn't think that works. The problem is that faith only stops with the act of believing and doesn't go far enough. Believing isn't going to do it because it centers on us, not on God. Believing is what we do, not who we are supposed to be believing in . Believing is a created thing. We create it with our mind and intellect. And as such, it is as misguided a goal as wealth or fame. Faith is just a thing. It's God we really want, isn't it? And God isn't reached by faith or any kind of constructed belief or practice. God is reached by encounter and fellowship directly with Him. 

It's kind of like believing the Bible. If belief in and following the Bible is our goal, that's one thing. But it can end up kind of like worshiping a book. A good book for sure, but it is still a book. The Bible is not God. It may be from God or about God, but it is not God. Neither is faith. The Bible and faith are both tools, means to an end, but not good final goals. There's more. With God, there's always more.

The temptation is to go to church, read your Bible, learn prayers and verses, then kind of dust off your hands from all the effort (and it is an effort) and think you're done. 

But that's just the beginning. It's like putting a carcass on the table without meat. There's a framework to build on, but nothing of real substance to nourish.

God gave us the Bible to lead us to Him. That's it. Nothing more. 

He gave us faith, and prayer, and church families for that, too. Nothing more. It's Him. It was always Him. 

Faith and doctrinal frameworks provide support on which those things might grow, but there's little point in growing a tomato plant if you never pick the tomatoes. 

Faith is not the fruit of a well-lived life. Life in God is. Faith is temporary. You will not need it in heaven. 

Knowing your Bible is not the fruit of a well-lived life. God is. You will not need someone else's idea of what God is saying in heaven.

Building a strong church is not the fruit of a well-lived life. God is. You will be part of a church with no walls, no hymns, no bake sales in heaven. 

When God tells us to focus on the eternal, He means Himself. 

So lose your faith, and focus on Him, where faith becomes irrelevant because He is so real.

image: beliefnet

I Need a Hero

 

I went to see Chris Nolan's Odyssey yesterday.

I couldn't resist, having a sincere weakness for Homer and his epic poems - that Nolan should attempt this fabulous tale, one that has never lost its fascination, was worth the ticket alone. But it didn't work for me.

We left half way through, unsatisfied, and not knowing at first exactly why. I was just disappointed, deflated, knowing that something crucial was missing. And then my companion shook his head. I didn't see Odysseus, he said. All I saw was Matt Damon. That was it. It was impossible, incredible, but Nolan had made the Odyssey without a real hero. Matt either didn't have it in him or couldn't find it or was directed badly. Never mind that Telemachus was almost Woke or that the CG was better than some of the acting. The movie tried really hard, but in the end, at least for me, it fell flat. 

Then I started to think. Why is Homer so important, so lasting? I think it's that we love heroes.

Oh sure, there's a lot of talk about sports heroes and that kind of thing, but a real hero? They are a bit harder to come by. And what defines them? Bonnie Tyler, in 1984, thought she knew:

Where have all the good men gone, and where are all the gods?

Where's the streetwise Hercules to fight the rising odds?
Isn't there a white knight upon a fiery steed?
Late at night, I toss and I turn, and I dream of what I need

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the end of the night
He's gotta be strong, and he's gotta be fast
And he's gotta be fresh from the fight

I need a hero
I'm holding out for a hero 'til the morning light
He's gotta be sure, and it's gotta be soon

And he's gotta be larger than life, larger than life  

And maybe she wasn't too far from right on. Okay, the white knight business is a bit much, but some of rest sounds pretty right. Strong and fast, sure and right on time. That makes a lot of sense. Someone who brings just what we need when we can't and it seems like we need it so much. It's not always someone like Hercules or Odysseus or Achilles. It's not always even a man. Sometimes it's the person who is standing right next to you, the one who reaches into your chaos without fear and says "lean on me". And then does it. Every time. 

As far as films go, Uberto Pasolini and Ralph Fiennes did much better by Odysseus in his The Return. Here was an Odysseus I could understand. 

Worn from 20 years of war and struggle, he was visibly shredded, but found something in him that was larger than life and became the hero, not because he killed all the bad guys and came home to the girl, but because battled his own demons and won right before our eyes. Better than that, in the process he gathered in the people around him and proved true. 

There aren't many people like this in our world. There's a lot of flash and a lot of emotion, but real heroes? Not so much. They might be there, but they're hiding in plain sight most of the time.

You know, most of us can handle our day-to-day crises, even the larger ones that rear their nasty heads. But there are those days when our resources are at an end, when our doubts and fears get the best of us, and it's on those days we long for a hero who will stand in the gap of our weaknesses. 

I have two of them. There is God of course, who never fails and when my faith is strong enough to hold on to Him who has no flesh and blood, I gather all the strength I need from Him. But there are still those days when I shrink and fade in the face of the world's roller coaster. That's when my life's companion steps in. His hands, very much flesh and blood, reach out and catch me with confidence, strong and always right on time, and then hold on tight until I stop shaking.

May we all need to be someone's hero. It's in there. We just need to find it.

Sullying the Image

 

Mediocrity.

Good, comfortable, mediocrity.

No one rises above anyone else. No one keeps score in case someone might show themselves more able, more bold, than someone else. We are not only all equal in our dignity and humanity but we are all the same in our abilities and our courage. There are no heroes. There are no innate leaders. We are not challenged. We are satisfied.

Bah. 

Even Jesus knew that a society founded on mediocrity doesn't work. 

"I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot. I wish you were either one or the other! So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth." -Rev 3: 15-16

I am often mocked for finding truth in philosopher (and fierce capitalist) Ayn Rand, but sometimes, I just can't help it. Some of what she has to say rings true.

We don't want any great men. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept, and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop incentive to improvement, to perfection. 

This is why Jesus spits the mediocre out of His mouth. He wants excellence. He made us for perfection.

"Be ye perfect, like my heavenly Father is perfect." - Matthew 5:48

Perfect. And He's not kidding.

We may forget that we were made in God's image, but He hasn't. He did it and we are expected to live up to it. That means to be the best we can be, the most Christ-like, the most holy. We are to strive, not slump into perpetual, amused relaxation. 

There's a reaon for this.

There will always be venal men or women who will exploit our ennui. They will take advantage of our contentedness with the average and rise above, not with ability or nobility but with shrewdness, greed, and calculated corruption. Look around. We already live, at least partially, in this world. Do you wonder why?  Look in the mirror.

To what extent have you been given a vision of a life, a community, that offered something more than vanilla and done little to work toward it?

When have you been satisfied not with your best, but with just good enough?

To what extent have you traded the hours of your life to being amused?

Even the church can forget that, although we are taught to be the servant of one another, that assumes that everyone involved understands the principle of godly service. When some don't, we don't have a community of mutual service, but of servants and masters. Instead of all of us serving God, we end up serving someone who has no God. We are not to yield our godly image to them. We are not to forsake our holiness or our excellence to the service of those who dominate and destroy. 

We are responsible for preserving what we've been given and this is done one soul at a time. It is done starting with you.

image: istock